The crocodile bird

Summary: In The Crocodile Bird, Ruth Rendell weaves a mesmerizing story of the obsessive love between a mother and a daughter and its connection to a series of deaths near a remote English manor, magnificent in its hilltop isolation. Liza lived in the gatekeeper's cottage at Shrove House until the day the police took her mother away forever. Liza, who has grown up completely sheltered from the outside world, finds refuge with a young drifter. Each night she tells him a little more about her life: her mother's obsession with Shrove House and her mysterious claim to it, her mother's aversion to the modern world and her fierce desire to shelter Liza from its depredations. And, finally, Liza tells him of the men who came to Shrove House and never left alive. In England and increasingly in America, Ruth Rendell's devoted fans eagerly anticipate her every excursion into the shadow of the human psyche. The Crocodile Bird is the most chilling and powerful novel of her career and will establish her everywhere as today's unrivaled master of psychological suspense.